That was our thinking when we approached Maybelline New York with an
idea. An idea that put content front and center and gave women what they wanted
when it came to beauty — information, lessons, and techniques that would help
them get the look that inspired them.

But
it couldn’t just be about what we wanted to say. It also had to be about who
would say it.

01 A new fashion and beauty blogazine is born

So we created CITY, a digital monthly magazine that would be the hub for all things beauty and fashion from Maybelline’s point of view.

In included tips, videos, tutorials, must-have lists, interactive tid-bits and much more – all of which came from a carefully curated group of editors known as the “It team," including model and designer Erin Wasson, makeup artist Gabriel Almodovar and style guru Louise Roe.

It lived on maybelline.com, and the content was atomized across all of Maybelline's social platforms like Pinterest, Tumblr and Facebook. We designed it from scratch, and, with the help of our It team, produced content every single month for 14 months.

It was a hit.

In the first month, the first iteration of CITY surpassed Maybelline benchmarks across the board. Time on site, for example, increased 200 percent – nearly three times the average page view count on Maybelline.com.

We took a step back and thought: How can we really take this to the next level?

02 BUILDING CITY 2.0

CITY had become Maybelline’s trend and beauty blog and the every girl’s go-to for how-to.

But it was time to turn it up a notch. So in 2014, we hit the reset button and took the CITY platform to new heights.

We partnered with fashion blog giant Refinery29 and the fashion vloggers at StyleHaul to bring their own unique voice to the CITY brand.

From 60-second "Get the Look" features, to "Make My Weekend" shareable videos – each piece of original content complemented that month's theme. The new CITY was a deeper, more engaging site experience for users, and gave fans a reason to visit, stay and explore the rest of maybelline.com.

We totally overhauled the look & feel of the CITY experience to make it bigger and bolder than ever before. We added deeper content features, like a searchable "Inspiration" and "Tip of the Day" archive, which pulled in CITY content, as well as Tumblr, Instagram and Facebook images.

From ideation to execution, the CITY brand helped further establish Maybelline New York as a credible, relevant, year-round authority on fashion and beauty.